


the heart not to lose it

by defcontwo, sparklyslug



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Closeted Character, Gen, Las Vegas Aces, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Canon, Tyler Seguin: Kitten Dealer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 04:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4208643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklyslug/pseuds/sparklyslug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just before his 20th birthday, Kent Parson is hooking up with a stranger in the back of a bar. A year later, he's captain of the Las Vegas Aces, has won the Stanley Cup, and finally sees Jack Zimmermann again. </p><p>Oh, and he gets a cat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the heart not to lose it

**Author's Note:**

> the working title of this fic was "getting the c, not the d." we just really really felt that this was something everyone needed to know. 
> 
> thank you so much to ngozi for this beautiful comic that has inspired us so much, it brings us never-ending amounts of joy on a daily basis.

Kent’s only been out of the water for a minute when his phone starts buzzing on the deck chair behind him. 

He opens his eyes. The cement is a prickly damp heat against his back, not all that comfortable after the first bliss of heaving himself up out of the pool to pant there for a while. He could get up for a towel, put on a shirt, but he’d rather leave his legs dangling in the water, the sunlight over his chest and stomach feeling stronger by the second as it breaks free of the trees. 

He’d come out here around 5 a.m. after finally giving up on sleep. It’s been a full day and a half since he got back from the city, but he’s having a hard time shaking off this trip. New York isn’t a hockey town, but it’s an _everything_ town, and he was stupid to forget that. Just like he was stupid to head to that bar with the discreet flag sticker up front, stupid to get pulled into conversation with that group of guys, stupid to let them buy his drinks, stupid to let one of them take him into a dark corner in the back. 

Leaving as soon as it was over was the only smart thing he’d done all weekend. 

Not that anything terrible had actually happened. Not that he’d been recognized, or had his photo taken, or really thinks the guy would ever put enough of the picture together to do anything. But he doesn’t know any of that for sure. And just because nothing terrible had happened this weekend, doesn’t mean it can’t be waiting for him somewhere down the line. 

There’s nothing he can do about it now, but slipping out of his house to swim laps until the sun comes up at least tires him out enough so he stops freaking out so goddamned hard. 

And then, just when he’s feeling more relaxed and like he could slip into an easy, sun-bathed nap full of the boneless glow of a good workout, his phone has to go off. 

Typical. 

But he has been waiting to hear if Mom and Abby got to Seville okay, so he rolls onto an elbow and stretches for the phone, managing to keep his feet in the water with only a little undignified splashing. 

“This is Parson,” he says politely when he answers, because caller ID shows that this isn’t his mom, and a worst-fears-coming-true prickle is rising fast and hard along his spine. 

“Hey, Kent,” Cooper rasps over the line, the connection going a little bit crappy between the deserts of Vegas and the hills of the Hudson Valley. “Having a good off-season so far, kid?”

The Cup was three weeks ago. Not that that matters to Kent much since the Aces’ season had ended at the beginning of April. He’s _been_ well into his off-season and not feeling any less shitty about it. Even less so, watching the fucking Ducks lift the Cup. 

Happy Birthday to him. 

“Alright,” is all he says, because Cooper knows. Of the entire coaching staff, he’s the one who’s been checking up on all of them the most over the past few months. Seems like there are a million Assistant Coaches who always have something to say to Kent, and Cooper’s the only one who’s actually interested in what he has to say back. “How’s everything in Vegas? Hot as hell, I’m guessing.”

“You guess right,” Cooper says. “And about to get hotter. I’ve got some news, Kent. And I know how you get, so think and breathe before you react, okay?”

Kent pushes himself up into a sitting position, stares into the depths of his pool and at the wobbly lines of blue tile along the bottom. At his bare feet, looking spooky space-alien pale and distorted in the water. 

“I’m thinking, I’m breathing,” he says, and it doesn’t come out as the joke he means it to. “Come on, Coach. What’s going on?”

“Management’s decided to give you the C this year, Parson.”

Well. He was braced for a shock, but not _this_ shock. After a moment, Kent tips his head forward, letting his wet hair flop down over his forehead and into his eyes. If his mom hadn’t fucked off to Spain he could get her to cut it for him, but he hadn’t thought of asking before they’d left. 

“What do you mean, the C?”

“What do you think I mean, Kent?” Cooper chuckles, and his voice is full of the warmth of someone who knows they’re delivering good news. “Captain, kid. You’re going to be Captain of the Las Vegas Aces. Congratulations.”

“After this season?” Kent isn’t thinking _or_ breathing, he’s just replaying every single shot he didn’t make, every point that got past him, every miserable silence in the locker room. This isn’t what he thought Cooper could be building up to, but it might be somehow worse. “Cooper, come on.”

“Don’t try and tell me how your season was, Kent,” Cooper says, steel slipping into his tone. “I was there, I saw it. It didn’t go our way, but not for lack of trying on your part. Not for lack of leadership, which we think you’re ready for more of.”

“I know, Coach, I know,” Kent says, because at least when it counts he can keep his head enough not to fuck up with an AC. “It’s just, uh. It’s a surprise.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Cooper snorts. “Not like you to be so modest, kid. Who else is there?”

Who else? Fucking _anyone_ else, any one of the old guard who had been building this new franchise for years before Kent’s arrival, and hadn’t all been too impressed with this shiny new first round pick showing up to “save” their team. After Gary got traded, Kent had never thought— he’d just assumed that it would go to Trips, or Vassy. Yeah, his name’s on the Calder, but that doesn’t mean— he still hadn’t thought that would change anything, not long-term. It hadn’t changed anything short-term, for sure, his whole rookie year being something of a nightmare blur regardless of whatever shiny cups he’d picked up along the way. 

Yeah, maybe Kent’s getting to be kind of a name in the league. He sees that, he knows how many Twitter followers he has, he’s not stupid. But childhood dreams aside, he’s not Captain material. He never was. He wouldn’t even have liked wearing the A in the Q if it wasn’t that he was wearing it while he stood next to—

Next to Jack, Kent makes himself think, the mental equivalent of two-for-flinching. He wore the A standing next to Jack, and that’s the last letter he thought he’d ever have. 

Kent isn’t a Captain. Kent can’t take that on. He’s seen Captains, okay. He knows what kind of guys they are. Kent is not that kind of guy. For a whole mountain of reasons, he is not that kind of guy. 

“It’s because we have faith in you, kid,” Cooper says quietly, when it becomes clear that Kent isn’t going to answer. “This is the right call. For you, for the team.”

Kent lets himself flop back down onto the deck. A little too hard and too fast, and he grunts on impact. 

“I understand,” Kent says, because what he really understands is that this is not something he has any actual say in. “Thanks, Cooper. It’s an honor.”

“Atta boy,” Cooper says, his growl back to being full of sunny warmth, so Kent’s managed to play this right yet again. “You’re gonna get an unholy storm of calls and emails in a minute, but I wanted you to hear it from me first. Congratulations, Kent. It’s going to be a great season, I know it.”

“Yeah,” Kent says. “Thanks.”

They trade goodbyes, and Cooper hangs up. Kent lets his phone drop down on to his chest, and stares up at the clear sky, the circle of green trees, the sun slanting down at him.

Kent Parson just turned twenty years old. Two days ago, he got into a bar with a shitty fake ID he wouldn’t dare use in Vegas, and had his hands pressed around the dick of a total stranger, panting into another guy’s mouth. 

Today, he’s Captain of the Las Vegas Aces. 

His phone starts buzzing against his chest again. For lack of any other option, he answers it.

~

After the initial flurry of “yes thank you”s and “it’s an honor”s and “I’m proud to be a part of this great franchise”s, there isn’t actually much for Kent to do. The Demonic Duo in PR (also known as Katie and Sylvie, who look as misleadingly sweet as their names sound) take most of it, and his agent Gina has the rest. She’s practically glowing over the whole thing, delighted to add Kent’s captained head to her metaphorical wall of trophies.

With no hockey to play and nothing going on for the months left in the off-season, Kent’s only job is to hang out with his family (back from Spain, tan and happy and determined to master making croquetas and paella for themselves), and to not fuck up spectacularly in some public way. 

So he stays out of the city. And limits himself to the dangers of the cheesecake at the Eatwell Diner, which is at least within jogging distance of the house. 

He’s there on a very quiet Wednesday morning, flicking through game apps on his phone and picking at a plate of corned beef hash, ignoring 90% of the texts he’s getting. 

Since the news got out, he’s probably sent less than ten texts back to anyone _not_ part of the media machine bent on grinding him into the dust. What he does send tends to be a variation on “thanks im p stoked [fire emoji] [Ace emoji] [fire emoji],” for lack of any other clue of what to say to former classmates, distant relatives, ex-teammates, or whoever. 

An incoming text stops him cold, fork halfway to his mouth. 

[Shakster: yo P you talked to Zimms?]

Kent’s Pavlovian response to anything resembling that question doesn’t sting any less, even after almost three years. He puts down the fork and instantly thumbs out an answer. 

[not lately y] 

The wait for a response probably isn’t as long as it feels, but it _is_ long. After Juniors Shakil had signed on with the KHL; Kent doesn’t even know what the hell kind of time zone he’s in right now. 

[starting college, man! Good news, right?]

Kent snorts. Well, it’s more imaginative than the last couple of Jack rumors that’ve been lobbed his way, he’ll give it that. 

[4 real where]

[idk man, you have google, internet out here is for shit and the KGB is watching ;P some place in Boston. D1, barely]

Google hasn’t told him much new about Jack in a while, and his last guilt-laden and stilted conversation with Bob had just been about Jack coaching a peewee team and ‘doing fine.’ The hockey rumor machine hasn’t made much of that, since Jack ‘doing fine’ doesn’t exactly make for a catchy headline. 

Him starting at Samwell University is worth some copy, at least. A little weekly-round-up piece in Deadspin, Bleacher Report chattering about notable players who’ve come out of that school (there aren’t many), mostly stuff from the school’s website itself. 

Jack’s really going to college. Jack Zimmermann, college freshman. Jesus Christ. 

That sentence, the whole idea, feels pretty fucking alien to Kent. The same way ‘Kent Parson, college freshman’ would feel alien. The same way it had when they were seventeen, classmates taking those tours and those tests while he and Zimms had eyes on nothing but their next weekend on the road, nodding off and passing notes during the SAT prep courses they couldn’t get out of. 

Kent looks up Samwell, looks up their hockey team, looks up— well, not looks up so much as trips over a lot of articles about what a wonderful, open, extremely and horribly gay place it is. 

Jack Zimmermann, 21, going to college. Going to Samwell University. Enrolling and starting in the fall. Couldn’t be reached for comment. “One in four, maybe more.” 

Kent laughs. Kent laughs real fucking hard, sitting by himself in an almost entirely empty diner, because this is just that funny. This is hilarious. Kent Parson is Captain of an NHL team, and Jack Zimmermann is what, picking out courses? Trying to find a roommate? Did he take his fucking SATs? Is he fucking getting ready to join the GSA, make a few friends, meet some new people?

Kent digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, gritting his teeth around half-giggles, not particularly wanting to examine what the other half is. 

“The fuck,” Kent wheezes, when he’s calmed down a little. “The fuck were you thinking, Jack?”

That’s the thing though, isn’t it? Kent doesn’t know what Jack was thinking. Kent hasn’t known for years.

Kent answers Shakster anyway, because it was cool of him to reach out to Kent about it. They’re an odd network of former teammates, a web of guys spread around the world who hardly ever talk about the one shattering thing that’s tied them all together. 

[p wild, good 4 him] 

[everyones growin up, huh P? You’re a Captain, Z’s a college man. Better get my shit together]

[good luck w that [poop emoji]]

“You still working on that, Kenny?” Jill asks, too battle-hardened a waitress and too familiar with Kent to do more than raise an eyebrow at his weirdo outburst. 

“No, I’m good,” Kent has no appetite at all anymore. “I’ll take some more coffee though, thanks.”

He turns back to his phone, and almost watches himself thumb back through his contacts at a distance, as though he’s not the one pulling up the name marked simply “Jack”. As if there could be any other. 

In the message window there’s just a column of right-aligned blue bubbles. Kent texting into the void, with no idea of whether the void even has the same number or not. He’s been trying not to call, so he doesn’t know if the voicemail message is even active anymore either. He doesn’t really want to find out. 

The most recent string of messages are painfully textbook examples of Kent Parson Trying to Play it Cool, all of them sent because he wasn’t feeling even remotely cool at the time. 

[hey zimms how are u doing?]

[Abby’s got a bf holy shit mom’s freaking out more than me tho]

[what’s up? how’s the fam?]

[so…..tips for a shit-scared captain?]

[seriously man I would love any tips you’ve got]

Kent winces at that last one, not for what he actually said but for all the versions that he’d typed out in full and then deleted. “I don’t know what i’m doing” and “you’re the only Captain I’ve ever respected and I can never live up to that ever” and “I miss you so fucking much it feels like dying just a little every time I’m on the ice without you why can’t we have that again I don’t want this I don’t want it like this I don’t want it without you,” until Kent had realized he was fucking wasted and it was time to let Abby take his phone and put on High School Musical or whatever. 

He doesn’t have to think much over what to send now, because he knows what to say and where to leave it. 

[congrats on Samwell man]

But just because he knows what to say and he knows where to leave it doesn’t mean that he _can,_ and he’s been watching every word out of his mouth for weeks (months, years), and doesn’t have a drop of energy left for it right now. So he sends one more message. 

[i miss you]

He doesn’t get a response. He didn’t really think he would. What a sucker he is though, for hoping anyway.

~

Kent Parson makes his triumphant return to Las Vegas, and no one gives a shit.

He spends most of his flight over bouncing his knees up and down in first class as he thumbs through all the material he could bug Cooper to send him, on top of the playbooks and shit that he’s already more or less committed to memory over the past few seasons. 

His neighbor’s a guy in a suit who doesn’t seem too impressed by the mess Kent’s making all over his seatback table, or maybe it’s just that he’s offended by how Kent doesn’t take his snapback off throughout the whole flight. 

Kent’s welcomed back by the usual scene at McCarran: the clamor of the slots at every terminal, the screens over every baggage claim carousel blasting Cirque du Soleil commercials in eye-searing color, every poster for a strip club or cabaret or burlesque show of some kind, featuring every variety of barely-clothed femininity. 

He’ll spend the next six months or so in and out of this place, so he knows he’ll get used to it. But the first time back in this airport, the first time back at the beginning of the season, he’s struck again by how _fucking_ weird this city is. 

_How the hell did I even get here,_ Kent thinks, stepping out into the 80-degree heat, cool for September. And has to smile a little, because that question right there has to be its own kind of welcome-back tradition. 

No one looks twice at him, from the terminal to the baggage claim out to the cab line. There’s no reason why they would, it’s not like Kent has the C over his head like some sort of holy fucking flame. Or that these people would know what it meant, even if he did. 

If there’s any indication that Las Vegas even has a hockey team, you wouldn’t know it by all the other shit that’s advertised in the airport. No one comes to Vegas for hockey. They’ve got the roulette tables and the slots, the blackjack and the poker, the fine dining and the clubbing, the shows and the bars and the strippers and the Vegas brides. 

No one in Vegas pays attention to what the Aces do, and why should they? What have the Aces ever done to make them pay attention? What have the Aces ever done to pull them away from all that noise and skin and flashing light, and say ‘look at us, we’re here, we fucking dare you to look away.’

Nothing. They’ve done fuck-all to earn that. 

But — and Kent is jittery with the thought, burning the way hope always does — maybe this year they’ll do something. Maybe this year, it’ll be Kent’s fucking face seeing him off from the terminal billboards. 

Him and his team. _His_ team.

~

The door to the locker room is closed firmly shut. Even through the thick wooden door, though, painted that bright, deep blood orange with an ace of spades on the front, Kent can hear the guys milling around on the other side. There’s a loud, sharp bark of a laugh that can only be their goalie. Some asshole is singing — Jeff, probably, it’s always fucking Jeff — and someone else is telling him to knock it the fuck off, already.

Typical locker room chatter. This is what happens when you stick a bunch of guys in a room together and make them spend too much time all up in each other’s business. You get on each other’s nerves, sure, but you learn to make do, shitty personalities and all. 

Kent’s reasonably sure that his team likes him, maybe more than he deserves, really. He’s not an idiot, he knows what a real piece of work he was during his rookie year. There’s no good explanation for it, not really, because sooner or later, he’s gotta stop blaming the whole world for not being Zimms. No one else is ever going to be Zimms. 

But they’re something, alright. Good guys, most of them, except for some of the older guys — some of the older guys, who wear their bitterness on their sleeves and who don’t put half as much fucking work into this as they should. 

That’s not how it’s supposed to go, not with this game. You step out onto the ice, you’re fucking in it. No half-assing it, or else what’s the point of showing up?

Maybe he’s always been a little sharp, a little annoyed, a little fucking distant with those guys. And maybe they got a little shorter with him than they should have because of it, but hey, Gary treated him with suspicion and a patronizing sort of oversight from minute one, long before Kent ever got the chance to open up his fat mouth and act like an asshole. 

Just take a shiny new expansion franchise in the middle of the godforsaken desert, a whole host of guys who got traded here because they just weren’t all that hot, and one eighteen-year-old all-star first draft pick with a chip on his shoulder, add it all up together, and shake and stir. It’s not exactly a cocktail that anyone would want to drink, but it could be, maybe, one day. 

With this game, if you step out onto the ice, you’re fucking in it. 

Kent shakes himself, squares his shoulders and pushes open the door. The room goes dead silent, and he could panic, right here in this moment, he could open up his mouth and blurt something out, lay all his insecurities bare, or, well. 

Or he could just wait it out. That seems like the sort of thing a captain would do. 

Kent folds his arms over his chest, and nods a greeting to the room. 

“What, are you waiting for us to get up on the benches and start chanting like in Dead Poets’ Society, or something?” Jeff asks, nodding right back, but there’s a lift at the corner of his lips, and something in Kent’s spine loosens, finally. They got drafted together, him and Jeff, and thank fucking god, because Kent doesn’t know what he’d do without the guy. 

“Wouldn’t hate a salute, actually,” Kent says, face carefully impassive. 

Ginger stares blankly, a puzzled wrinkle set deep into his forehead. “I don’t get it. What does this have to do with some Robin Williams movie?” 

Jeff laughs, sharp and short, and claps Ginger on the shoulder. “How did I get stuck with this buncha uneducated white boys, that’s what I want to know,” Jeff says, mostly to thin air, for probably the five millionth time in the past two years, turning back to Kent to shoot off a sloppy salute. “We’re waiting on you, oh captain my captain.” 

Kent looks past Jeff, who’s smiling that great big toothy grin of his, to the rest of the team. There’s a couple of rookies looking on in awe, which is a little weird but promising, still. A couple of the guys look like they really don’t care one way or the other, but Timmers, one of the d-men, and Banks, their goalie, both give him an encouraging nod. Some of the older guys, the ones who were buds with Gary and who aren’t taking his getting traded too well, look just this side of pissy, but not enough to do anything about it which, whatever. He can work with that. 

He can work with all of this. 

Kent unfolds his arms, lets out a laugh. “Damn right you are.”

~

Two weeks out of the preseason, they’re destroyed in an ugly, ugly game against the Schooners.

The bounce will go the way the bounce goes, and part of signing up for this lunatic game is accepting that some periods, some games, the hockey gods are just out for your fucking blood. In a very literal way, in that you could open every vein and spill every drop on the ice and still see your perfect shot ring off the posts and back to the boards again, and again, and again. 

But it wasn’t just bad bounces, or sick fate, or fucking Butcher dropping his lucky keychain right before getting out on the ice. They played like shit, and the post-game air is thick with how much they played like shit. 

Bad passes. Bad hustle. Bad looks. Drawing shit penalties for no reason, too many men on the ice _twice,_ probably because even too many men still hadn’t felt like enough. 

And against the Schooners, who went second for the draft pick in 2009. Who were robbed a Zimmermann but hey, got a Fletcher instead, who’s been doing alright by them so far since. Finding his feet maybe a little later than Kent has, but doing alright. They got pretty close during the combine but Kent fucking hates to look at him now, which is maybe why the guy got around him so often. 

Stupid mistakes. Mistakes they haven’t made in any game so far. Mistakes they shouldn’t have made against the fucking _Schooners._ Of all teams. 

Everyone says “I hate to lose,” because no shit, who would like it? But Kent really, really hates to lose. 

It was a little bit of a joke in the locker room, at first. Because that Parser, he sure is tightly wound, eh? Needs to relax and take it easy (and not be so fucking dramatic, whispered some, not very quietly). These things happen, right? But the kid doesn’t know. The kid can’t take it. Kid’s a natural winner, doesn’t even know how to lose, well he’s an Ace now for sure, ha ha ha. 

Kent knows how to lose. He’s done plenty of it. That’s the problem. What the fuck did he do all that losing _for,_ if he can’t win now?

It stopped being a joke, eventually. Kent learned. He learned to contain, to keep it buttoned up until he got out of the locker room, to the post-game drink or whatever, back to his room in Vassy’s place before he got his own apartment last year. 

He learned to contain, but only barely. And it just seemed to make the team nervous and keep their distance, more than anything else. 

So he focuses every cell in his body on just making it off the ice after the Schooners game, shaking hands with Fletcher and looking right through him, as he feels the walls coming down around him again. Every push across the ice towards the locker room lasts a lifetime, the dull buzz of an unhappy crowd louder to Kent than Jeff right in his ear, clapping him on the shoulder and shaking him a little. Trying to cheer him up, probably. 

Here’s what Kent is going to do: He’s going to shower, change, and get the fuck out of there as soon as he can. He’s going to go out, because he has to at least a little, and will peel off from the group at some point and find his own way back to his apartment. Maybe he’ll find some guy, but more likely he’ll get home alone, untouched, too drunk and not drunk enough, and in no way ready to sleep. 

He’s watched a lot of Vegas sunrises, after a loss. His apartment has great windows for that. 

That’s what Kent always has done, and he’s halfway to the showers before it even occurs to him that there’s any reason it wouldn’t go that way this time. A realization he only makes because Timmers is standing right in his way, Banks close at his elbow. 

“Uh, Cap?” Timmers says, cautiously. “How about it, huh?”

Kent blinks, not in any state to be quick on the uptake. 

“Coach’s said his bit. Any words of wisdom for the rookies?” Banks says, grinning too wide, the way he tends to when he’s facing down a shootout. He jerks his chin behind Kent, at the rest of the team. 

Kent turns slowly, perception of the locker room widening like someone’s lifted a veil from it. They’re all watching him, or emphatically pretending that they _aren’t_ watching him, in varying stages of undress and varying degrees of quietly miserable. 

“Oh,” Kent clears his throat, and tries to square his shoulders under the weight that he thinks could carry him right to the floor if he stops moving. “Right.”

Fuck, Captain shit, of course. Even Gary would say a few words, not that Kent was ever with it enough after a loss to retain a single one. What would Jack do? What would Jack say?

Kent should just pretend he’s Jack Zimmermann, and BS his way through it. 

Or maybe he should just pretend he’s Kent Parson. He’s had more practice BSing his way through that one, after all. 

“That was a fucking mess out there today,” he says, tongue slow in his mouth, and it only a little comes out like a croak. “But I know we all took some notes, we’ll get on it, and we’ll get better. In time to destroy the Avalanche on Thursday, right?”

There’s a murmur around the room, the first “yeah Cap” that Kent’s ever heard. It shoots right through him, in a way he was completely unprepared for, and for a second the post-loss darkness lightens around him just that much more. 

“I like how that sounds, that’s pretty good,” Kent says, and his voice comes out a little stronger. “Let me really hear that, let me hear one ‘yeah Aces’ before I throw myself in that shower.”

“Yeah Aces!” The rookies make the most noise, because they’re all heart, even after throwing everything they had under the Schooners’ skates. 

“Come the fuck on, let me _hear_ it,” Kent crosses his arms. 

“ _Yeah Aces!”_

“Madden at mine tonight,” Banks calls out, before the chant’s fully died down. “Come drown your sorrows in pizza, watch Parser get weepy over Peyton Manning’s perfect spiral!”

Kent rolls his eyes, but doesn’t have energy for anything else as he finally shoulders his way past Timmers and Banks, who keep arguing about Eli vs Peyton over his head, the whole locker room now full of a tired, chatty buzz. Not happy— they still fucking lost and lost bad. But they’re talking, they’re peeling themselves out of their sweaters and pads, and there’s Madden and pizza at Banks’ tonight. 

He leans into the shower spray, combing his hands through his hair slowly, waiting for the crushing weight of a loss to lay him out again. 

It’s there, oh it’s there. Kent’s wobbly with it, and with the additional effort of having to actually Be A Captain. He feels scraped raw, and it’ll be a miracle if he can drag himself out of this locker room and manage another word to anyone. 

But he has to. He’s the Captain, so he has to. And so he will.

~

So, there was this tradition.

As much as there can be any kind of a tradition with an expansion team that hasn’t even seen five whole seasons just yet. So it was mostly bullshit, really, just an excuse for guys to be kind of shitty and pretend that it was all for the sake of camaraderie, team building, those kinds of things.

When Kent first got to Las Vegas, though, this tradition was packaged and sold to him as mandatory, vital team bonding, and that tradition was this: the captain takes the rookies to strip clubs. 

He could sit around and wallow in it, if he really wanted to. He could let himself think about how shitty it had felt the first time they’d dragged him out there — how he was eighteen, too young to even be there in the first place. How the A/C hadn’t worked right in the club, and so it was just that shade of too hot to be really comfortable, no matter how much he’d tugged at his tie, or how tightly he held the whiskey and coke someone had forced into his hand in the slim hopes that the sweating glass would have any kind of effect. 

It didn’t, of course, and Gary constantly breathing down his neck, asking him if he was having a good time, saying shit like, “bet you didn’t party like this in the Q, huh, Parson, welcome to the big leagues,” yeah, that didn’t fucking help either. 

Kent’s not, whatever. He’s got a baby sister, he’s close with his mom. He gets women well enough, or at least as much as any dude can. He’s also really pretty shitty at feigning interest where there’s none, so it was probably inevitable that at one point, one of the girls would take one look at his complete and utter lack of desire, take him under the literal actual wing that was part of her costume, pour him a drink that he liked a little better than that warm, sour whiskey and coke, and spend the rest of the night showing him pictures of her cat. 

Her name’s Carla, in the daytime, and Ruby, by night, and they did make a pretty good picture. It was convincing enough, the way that she’d wrap herself around him like a goddamn octopus, giggling into his ear, and all the while, they’d be talking about Netflix binging, or whatever. 

She never asked him any questions and he never offered her any explanations. It was what it was, and the last time the guys dragged them all out there, Carla told him that she’d decided to quit, that she was moving to Arizona to live with her sister, that she was thinking about maybe going back to school. 

College: all the rage these days, go fucking figure. 

He never did get to meet her cat, but he’s still got at least a dozen or so pictures of it on his phone that she’d sent him, so at least there’s that. 

One thing’s for sure: he’s not walking into the Vegas Dolls without her in it, and he’s sure as hell not going to dedicate whole nights to playing weird uncle to a bunch of teenagers, clapping them hard on the shoulder with one hand and buying them drinks with the other. 

He can’t even buy them drinks, anyways. He’s not old enough, and who thought of that bad joke? A twenty-year-old NHL captain living in Las Vegas. Jesus, the media’s going to be out for his blood every second he so much as steps outside for a night with the team, never mind anything else. 

He puts it off for as long as he can, and he does it well because he’s a talker, always has been, and it’s not a lot of effort to get his mouth flapping so often that no one can think to ask him any questions until they’re all already in their cars, driving home. It’s not that he’s not going to say anything; he will, he has to, it’s just that he has to figure out a way to say it that’s not going to piss everyone off. 

It’s Biggsy who forces the issue and Kent should’ve seen that one coming, probably, because it’s exactly the kind of thing Biggsy would do. He waits until all the rookies are present, suited up and mostly just loitering around on the ice, waiting for the GMs to show up and for practice to start, so he knows that he’ll have their full attention, and then he strikes. 

“Hey, Parser,” Biggys calls out. “We’re well into the start of the season, now, and these sad little virginal rookies are starting to break my goddamn heart. When are we hitting up the Dolls?” 

Kent turns away, tugging his helmet on over his head, tossing out a quick, muttered, “we’re not,” through the weight of the heavy plastic. But he regrets it as soon as he says it, so he turns right around and looks Biggsy dead in the eye before repeating himself. “We’re not doing that this year.” 

Whoops. So much for finding a way not to piss everyone off.

Biggsy gapes. “What the fuck, Parser? That’s a fucking tradition.” 

Kent stares at Biggsy evenly, and then turns his head, meeting the gaze of every last one of the guys on the ice. “Yeah, you know what else is a tradition around here? Losing. Not making it to the playoffs. Getting our asses all over the tabloids with talk about how the Aces care more about partying than they do about hockey.” 

“You’re saying we’re not going to party anymore? _You_?” Ginger says, a little incredulous, and Kent has to huff out a laugh because yeah, alright, fair point. 

“I’m not saying that,” Kent says. “I mean, c’mon, guys. Would we even know how to stop?” 

One of the rookies lets out a loud, “hell yeah!” 

“But...” Kent starts, reaching out and knocking his stick into Biggsy’s, and it makes a loud clacking sound as it falls to the ice. Anyone else, and it could’ve been funny, could’ve been a teasing-little-shit thing to do, but Kent knows Biggsy won’t take it that way. Good. He didn’t fucking mean it that way. 

“Now, we’re going to be a little smarter about it. There’s a lot of attention on us right now to get our shit together. So let’s act like we actually care about getting our shit together, alright?” 

“Don’t go looking for trouble when it’s probably just going to find us anyways, eh?” Jeff cracks, and Kent shoots him a nod. 

“That’s the idea, smartypants. Alright, Aces — are we here to gossip or are we here to play some fucking hockey?”

~

That bullshit taken care of, Kent thinks it might be about time to get his own house in order, so to speak. In a nagging corner of his mind, he figures it’s not right to demand changes from these losers if he doesn’t likewise take a long look at the things he needs to change himself.

Besides, he’s a little tired of waking up in a cold sweat, running through all the morning-afters that could ruin his life. The momentary reward is maybe just not worth the crushing risk. 

Kent has actually come out, actually said the words “I’m gay,” to three people in his life. The first two were his mom and Abby, because he had to say something, even if he was pretty sure they both already knew. There was no coming out with Jack; that had all just kind of… happened. 

The third was Mac, their head Team Physician, who definitely hadn’t already known. Not that she was ever easy to get a read on, being firmly of the take-no-shit, suck-it-up-you-baby school of bedside manners. But she probably couldn’t have predicted that the routine introductory physical would go:

“Are you sexually active?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, any history in your family of—”

“With men. I’m gay.”

Kent hadn’t been honestly expecting to say it, until the words were coming out of his mouth. Maybe because it was actually relevant, one of the few times it had even _been_ relevant in relation to hockey. But more likely because it was a few weeks after the draft, he was shit-scared, shaken, hurting with every second Jack wasn’t calling him back, and feeling like he was drowning in the middle of this barren fucking desert he’d landed himself in. And because he’d met Mac and her wife at the Operations mixer the night before, and seen Mac’s genuine smile for the first time as she’d handed her wife a glass of wine.

“Alright,” Mac had said after a moment, one quick flash of a sympathetic grimace all he got before she was back to business. “Thank you for telling me.”

Which was exactly what Kent’s mom had said when he’d told her, weirdly enough. 

They hadn’t exactly talked about it after, having like ‘gay buddy moments,’ or anything. But it’s enough to hang around, kick his feet up on her desk and get in her way while she’s trying to do paperwork, and not have to hold back that small fraction of shit that he’s always holding back around every other person in his Vegas life. 

It’s just a fraction. But it makes a bigger difference than he thought it would. Of all the pain-fueled bullshit he did during his rookie year, that’s one split-second impulse decision he’s glad he made. 

“You see that shit from Sylvie this weekend?” Kent says, wincing as Mac prods at his side. “What the fuck, Mac, if the rib wasn’t broken already—”

“You’re fine, you total infant,” Mac says, dry as dust and about as warm. “They’re just bruised, and you know it. What shit?”

“About the cash the Tribune’s willing to pony up for shots of me out, and like, drinking and stuff. Any of us, you know, underage guys, but my number’s about 50k higher than anyone else’s,” Kent breathes around the pain in his ribs, dropping his shirt as Mac steps back to scribble in his chart. “It’s kind of got me thinking about changing some things.”

“Good, I’m sure that was Sylvie’s point,” Mac says without looking at him, tucking a strand of red hair (shot through with grey she clearly can’t be fucked to dye) behind an ear. “Your liver could use the break, that’s for sure, not to mention—”

“Not that kind of change,” Kent says. “I meant... other stuff.”

Mac puts down his folder — pretty thick, as sure a sign as any that he’s been doubling down on the ice this season — and turns to look at him squarely. 

“What kind of other stuff, Kent?” She says evenly. 

“You know,” Kent says, because she clearly does. “I’m Captain now.”

“So I’ve heard,” she says. 

“Yeah, _and—_ ” Kent’s voice rises, temper fraying a little because dammit, every breath hurts even if it’s just a bruise and not a break, “—people are fucking watching for me. They always have been, that’s not new, but this... this is another level, even for me.”

He’s had eyes on him like this before. So far nothing’s been crazier than the end of Juniors and the onset of the Draft madness. But if he’s honest, he was so wrapped up in Zimms and Zimms was so wrapped up in him that he hadn’t felt that pressure as much as he should have. Which had probably been part of the problem. 

“And making Captain’s the dream, you know,” Kent looks at the crappy linoleum tile, distantly reflecting that for all the money that went into this complex they could’ve gone with something not puke-green. “Growing up, that’s the pinnacle, that’s where you want to be when you’re like, nine years old. When you don’t just love the game and want to play it, you want to play it _and_ be the big deal NHL star.”

“What does this have to do with your sexuality?” Mac asks, still in her doctor voice. 

“Well, when I imagined making a name for myself as Captain, you can bet it wasn’t going to be as a cocksucker Captain,” Kent snaps. 

That gets Mac out of doctor mode, and she frowns thunderously. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Kent sighs, moves to run a hand through his hair but stops before he gets halfway there because it fucking hurts too much. “It’s just— that’s not who I want to be, you know?”

“But Kent,” Mac says, her voice as gentle as he’s ever heard it, even while she’s still scowling at him. “That _is_ who you are.”

“And I can’t help that,” Kent agrees, voice flat. “But I can help what I do about it.”

“What are you saying?” Mac crosses her arms. “That you’re just going to take some sort of— vow of celibacy? That you’ll just step back and not want what you want? It’s not some kind of switch you can flip, you can’t just turn it off. No one can do that, and trust me, you’re not the first person to try. It just doesn’t work that way.”

“Well, Doc,” Kent smiles thinly. “As you remind me so often, I _am_ a pretty stubborn asshole.”

There’s a moment of silence in the examining room. The hum of the overhead fluorescent lights is uncomfortably loud, yet another bit of bullshit for a facility that doesn’t _have_ to be a carbon copy of every shitty doctor’s room around the country. The misery of getting poked and prodded is apparently not complete unless you’re bathed in that flat, hard light. 

Kent Parson, musing about interior decoration. Now that’s fucking gay. 

“I hate this goddamned sport,” Mac says, mostly to herself. “I really— Kent. You’re twenty years old. You can’t just lock yourself away from all possible connection with other people.”

Kent shrugs, and winces again. He’s getting a little sick of everyone pointing out his age, to be honest. “You can see why I have to try though, right?”

Mac just looks at him in mutely furious frustration. _Can’t argue with that_ , Kent thinks, with none of the satisfaction of winning a debate. 

“Okay. I’m gonna find the nearest hot tub and never leave it,” Kent says, sliding carefully down from the examining table. “Thanks, Doc.”

“Take care of yourself, Kent,” Mac says, still looking pissed but patting him on the arm, her hand lingering for a moment. “I mean it, really.”

“Of course I will,” Kent says, shooting her a peace sign as he hobbles his aching ass out of her door. “I always do.”

Kent shuffles down the hallway with his hands in his pockets, feeling around for some kind of paradigm shift. For the big change, the world tilting on its axis, the decision having undone something in himself or his surroundings. 

There’s nothing. Nothing feels different, nothing feels dramatically changed. He just feels tired. Sore, achy, and very, very tired. 

Kent Parson is twenty years old, he’s on a solid 10-game point streak, is the Captain of the Las Vegas Aces, and — and that’s it. From now on, that’s all there has to be.

~

Kent’s record speaks for itself pretty clearly, and it does show one thing too clearly to be denied: Kent Parson will do pretty much any stupid thing when he’s got a crush.

It’s not— it’s not even a fucking crush, really, okay, Kent likes to think that when he has actual interest he can manage better than stammering and falling all over himself in front of the guy. He just can’t seem to help himself, though. There’s something about Tyler Seguin that just reaches into the innermost corner of his past and yanks on every lever for twelve-year-old-pubescent-disaster-Kent-Parson.

“You’ve been in Vegas for all of _two days_ ,” Banks says, sounding deeply impressed. “How’d you have time to get your asses handed to you by us, _and_ pick up a box full of kittens?”

“Buddy of mine in town can’t keep ‘em all,” Segs says, grinning at Banks. “Lotta Bruins fans out West, man, what can I say?”

“Blasphemy,” Banks grins, knocking the neck of his beer companionably against Segs’. “Parser can take one, he’s got a pet-friendly apartment and shit. You will, won’t you, Parser?”

Segs turns that grin on Kent, and Kent manages to take a sip of his own beer without spilling it all over himself. He’s going to murder Banks, just as soon as this hot streak he’s got going on goes cold.

“Yeah, Parser?” Segs says. “Come on, man, least you can do for so publicly beating my ass today.”

Fortunately, Kent manages to swallow without an incident around _that_ loaded statement. Unfortunately, he doesn’t manage to shut the whole cat idea down, and it seems like Segs was pretty serious about it. 

It’s the last few weeks of the regular season, and Kent’s whole life has been condensed into the next practice and the next game and the next night out with the team, repeat, repeat, repeat. It works out okay that he isn’t getting laid any, because he gets back to his empty apartment every night and more or less collapses into bed. Not that he’d even have time to pick up any guys, if that was still a thing he was trying to do.

He can barely take care of himself, is the point. Let alone another living creature. Let alone a little puff of grey-and-black fur, with the biggest blue eyes he’s ever seen.

“Don’t get comfortable,” Kent says to the gently moving box in his arms, rereading the note that Segs has left on the top, before handing the whole thing (and three bags of random cat shit, including outfits, Jesus Christ) to Kent’s doorman and fucking off back to Boston. “This is just temporary.”

 _You and Parson Jr have fun,_ the note says, _You guys owe me a rematch, I better see you in June,_ followed by like, a million smiley faces. What the fuck, Segs.

The kitten — really just a kitten, she can probably fit in the palm of Kent’s hand — steps delicately out of her carrier, looking around at the apartment with the air of someone who’s seen it all before and finds it not that impressive.

“Parson Jr, huh?” Kent says to the cat, settling on to the couch and watching her pad around his living room. He snorts. “Cat Parson. Cat _Purr_ son. Kitten...Kit Purrson. Kit Purrson? What do you think?”

She looks over at him, flicking her tail disdainfully. 

“Yeah, maybe not,” Kent says. “Let you know when I come up with something better, next time I have a free second.”

He doesn’t have a free second, and finds that that actually suits him fine. It’s a hell of a thing to be wrapped up in, after all. He doesn’t remember it being like this last time they got close, doesn’t remember feeling that electric jolt every time he looks up at the Aces Arena on his way in for another practice, another meeting, suited up and ready for a game. With all that going on, re-naming the cat isn’t exactly top priority. 

He snaps a picture of the cat curled up and napping inside one of his snapbacks, and hesitates over the caption before posting it on Instagram.

The internet loses its mind over #KitPurrson pretty quickly, but he’s getting a little used to that happening too.

Kent comes home exhausted, and Kit weaves around his ankles, settling onto his lap as soon as he sits down. And weirdly, for right now — for right now, Kit is enough. Maybe not ‘enough’ because that’s not exactly fair, and it’s not like he’s so fucking unbalanced that he thinks his cat is a healthy replacement for, for, Zimms, for a fucking boyfriend or some sad shit like that. But somewhere in between waking up to a ball of yowling fluff sitting on his face and spending at least a solid five minutes full-out cackling at Kit tripping out on catnip, Kent finds that he doesn’t notice the loneliness all that much anymore. 

He makes a mental note to send Segs a fruit basket, or something.

~

If Kent had to put a finger on what cycle the Aces usually fell into every season, it would probably go something like this: start the season like a bat out of hell, get everyone talking all the way clear through until Christmas, only to wind up peaking in February and then finding a couple of spectacularly new and exciting ways to fuck it all up by the time playoffs roll around.

Sometimes it’s the injuries that get them, sometimes it’s the attitudes, and sometimes it’s both of them together wrapped into one: the perpetual fucking death knell for success. 

Momentum is the problem. Momentum has always been the problem. Because you have to be a little more than a bunch of well-paid strangers to tough it out, to grit your teeth and play your best game, not just for yourself, but for every other guy out there on the ice and, well. 

Like he said: sometimes, it’s the attitudes. 

This season, though. This season, it feels like everything is clicking. He and Jeff have always been good together, they’re good linemates, but ever since Jeff got that shiny new A on his chest, it’s like something else dropped right into place. They’re stepping up and egging each other on, and the end result is lots and lots of fucking goals. 

Kent sits cross-legged on his bed, with Kit curled up in his lap, surrounded by a bunch of whiteboards fanned out all around him. He’s in the middle of drawing up tactics and every once in a while, he’ll reach for his phone to shoot out a message or two to the Aces’ group text. He’s pretty sure that his apartment is starting to look more and more like Cooper’s office threw up in here with every passing day. 

There’s whiteboard markers on every conceivable surface where there’s not already cat toys, and he’s yelped at least five or six times today alone because he keeps going and stepping on them, like a fucking idiot, but whatever, he’s pretty sure that this is an improvement in his living situation as a whole. He got this place a couple of months into his second season with the Aces, when he finally got tired of sharing too much breathing space with Vassy. Still, he wonders sometimes why he ever bothered; he’s never quite been able to shake the over-sized hotel room vibe that this apartment gives off. 

Sure, he’s put in some personal touches, here and there. The fridge is covered in photos, mostly of Kent with his mother and his sister, and right at the corner of it, near the edge of the ice dispenser, there’s a cracked, yellowed polaroid shot of him and Zimms stuck onto the fridge with some packing tape. 

The photo’s from that one time when Zimms brought his polaroid camera to the lake, a couple of weeks before the draft, and then spent the whole fucking day trying to play like he wasn’t taking photos of Kent but he was, Kent knew he was, he kept catching Zimms at it out of the corner of his eye. Kent had tackled him, then, had wrestled the camera out of Jack’s hands and wouldn’t let up about it until he was sure that they got at least two or three good photos with both of them in it. 

Kent can still hear Jack’s indignant squawk when, not long afterwards, they’d accidentally rolled over on top of the photos on the beach towel, too caught up in each other, in the heady feel of sun-warmed skin and the sort of lazy, sloppy kisses that only a summer day can bring, to remember where they’d left the polaroids. 

It’s a shitty photo, really. The image is barely salvageable; you can’t exactly tell what you’re looking at when you’re looking at it: the lines of their necks, a tuft of Jack’s terrible almost-mullet, Kent’s nose, the way they were in the middle of catching each other’s eye, bent far too close for any kind of plausible deniability. 

Kent doesn’t know why he put it up in the first place, but it’ll be a cold day in hell when he can ever bring himself to take it down. 

So yeah, it’s better to work here, in his bedroom, surrounded by so many whiteboards and barely legible hockey plays. 

Well, maybe not better, not exactly. It’s easier, anyways. 

Instead, Kent wakes up every morning and takes a look at the post-it stuck to the wall above his bed. He likes to update the number scrawled on it with a ballpoint pen, if only to remind himself that this point streak he’s on right now isn’t from the vivid imagination of his twelve-year-old self, that this shit is real, it’s actually happening right now. 

He hasn’t updated it since their last game; fucking superstition, or something. He can’t do it until the morning of the next game, that’s the rule. 

“Well, you’ve got yourself a game tonight, Parson,” he mutters to himself, reaching for a pen and making a shushing apologetic sound at Kit for disrupting her place in his lap, as he leans up to cross out the number that’s already written there and write in a new one. 

It’s all part of the routine, now. He’s gotta prepare himself for tonight’s game. 

That night, they clinch their playoffs spot.

~

They knock out St. Louis and then the Kings, and everyone has a good long laugh about that one because honestly, fuck the Kings. Finally, it’s the Western Conference Final against the Sharks, and by that point, Kent can’t help the buzzing that’s running straight through him, all day every day, can’t pipe down the little voice inside his head that says, “yeah, alright, _maybe this year.”_

This is as far as the Aces got during his rookie year and sure, by the end of it all, he still got his name on the Calder and he’s proud of that, he is, for all that he still doesn’t know how he managed to paste himself together well enough most days to play the kind of hockey that he needed to play to earn that trophy. It’s a point of pride for him now — a mantra to live by, to get out of bed for in the morning, and something to always, always push him forward: that even at his absolute fucking worst, he can still manage to pick himself up enough to play better than every other fucker out there. 

It’s still not the same as lifting the Stanley Cup. 

There’s something about the team this year, something that just feels more real, more present, than they did two years ago. It could be how good their rookies are this season, or it could be the dead weight they finally got rid of. Probably, it’s a little bit of both. 

Whatever it is, it’s a good feeling. Like maybe this time, they could actually go out there and get it done.

~

They sweep the Sharks in four, and it’s the Bruins on the other side waiting for them.

 _Boston_ is on the other side waiting for him, but Kent’s not going to think about that, not right now, not when he’s so close to the Cup that he can almost taste the champagne inside it. 

The night before game one against the Bruins, Kent gets a good luck text message from Bob Zimmermann and a phone call from a blocked number. Whoever it is hangs up before Kent even has the chance to open up his mouth and say a single goddamn word. 

About an hour later, Kent gets an email from Shakster that’s just a link to a short little Deadspin blurb about how Jack Zimmermann’s been voted captain of the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team, the youngest captain in the college’s history. That’s a whole other bucket of worms right there, and Kent lets himself imagine, if only for a moment, that maybe Jack was trying to call to ask _him_ for advice. 

Which, whatever. 

Kent’s not going to let himself think about that either.

He figures that if he repeats it to himself a couple more times, it’ll finally start being true.

~

After finally escaping from the roar of the crowd, the mad babble of the media, the screaming of his teammates right in his ear, the hiss and pop of a beer can opening shouldn’t seem so loud. But it does, somehow, in the dark, closed quarters of the storage room he’s found himself stuffed inside of. Kent sputters out a whispered, “fucking watch it, man,” shuddering at the sensation of liquid getting unexpectedly poured down the front of his jersey.

The beer can is icy cold and sweating condensation, pressed close against Kent’s jaw, and Jeff is cackling just this side of maniacally as he pours the beer down Kent’s throat. They’re hiding away from the press with the only beer that Ginger could manage to hand off to them without anyone seeing and Kent has fucking beer dripping down his jersey and in his hair, probably, because they’re a pair of dumb assholes who couldn’t even be bothered to turn on the light. 

“Fucking drink that shit, Cap, you earned it,” Jeff says, but then he’s pulling the beer away for himself a second later, finishing it off and crushing the can neatly with one fist. Kent has a moment of climbing hysteria for a second because really, how could he not — the last time he was crammed tight inside a storage closet with a boy, it was Zimms, and they were on the verge of hooking up. 

Jesus, this moment couldn’t be further from that in every possible way. 

Kent can taste blood and beer in the back of his throat, he’s got a sprained ankle that he’s been ignoring through most of the series, and less than an hour ago, after three hours of the most desperately bare-knuckled and beautiful hockey he’s ever played in his life, he won the fucking Stanley Cup. 

“We won the fucking Stanley Cup,” Jeff crows, like he can read Kent’s mind or something, and they should not be doing this because all anyone’s been asking this whole series is, “what are you going to do if you win? Neither of you are old enough to drink.” 

Fuck that. They’re a young team; most of them aren’t old enough to drink yet. The fact that their average age right now is twenty-three and they’ve all just earned their very first Championship rings, that should be the real story, but all anyone seems to care about is how best they can catch them all out doing something they shouldn’t. 

Fucking typical. 

And yet, right now, sticky with sweat and spilled beer and full to the brim with the giddy, bubbling feeling of _I did it, I made it, I fucking_ made _it_ , Kent can’t even muster up a little bit of anger. 

“Should’ve dragged some of the rookies in here with us,” Kent says, plucking the mostly crushed can out of Jeff’s hand to hold it up to his mouth and shake it once, twice, because what the hell, right, you never know. “Someone’s probably fetching them apple juice right now. S’not fair.” 

“We only had the one beer, Parser,” Jeff says. “And I went and let you have most of it because I’m goddamn magnanimous like that.” 

“And because I scored the winning goal,” Kent says, voice going a little high at the end of it, and oh yeah, that’s a whole other shade of hysterical right there because every dream he’s ever had since he was four years old just finally came true. 

“And because you scored the winning goal,” Jeff says, dutifully, before breaking down into helpless giggles again. “Fuck, _Parser._ We just won the Stanley Cup.” 

Jeff slings an arm around Kent’s shoulders and squeezes, shaking them both a little from side to side and it hits Kent again, that moment of deja vu, a pang of wanting out of nowhere, sharp and sudden, and the thought pushing its way forward to the front of his mind, _I wish you were here with me, Zimms._

~

Mac drags them out of the storage closet, one hand wrapped firmly around Kent’s arm while she digs out a couple of breath mints for him and Jeff to chew on with the other.

“Save it for the party at Biggsy’s tomorrow, when there won’t be any cameras around,” Mac says, trying to sound stern, but she’s flushed in the face, like she’s been screaming and cheering, and she can’t stop smiling, so Kent figures that she’s not all that mad, not even a little bit. Mac lets him go and makes to clap him on the back, but winds up reeling him into a sideways hug, like she couldn’t quite help that one either, and Kent leans into her. 

“You did good, kid,” Mac says, dropping her voice down low enough so that not even Jeff could hear her unless he wanted to lean in to do it. “I’m really fucking proud of you. Now get out there and act like you don’t have beer in your hair, you great big idiot.” 

Kent’s still dragging a hand through his sweaty, wet hair when Biggsy shoves a bottle of Gatorade at him and then pushes him in front of a crowd of journalists, all holding their microphones out, eager for a sound bite from the newly victorious captain. 

Kent cracks open the bottle of Gatorade and takes a sip, frowning slightly because there’d been something a little suspiciously crafty about how Biggsy had shoved the bottle at him, but it tastes fine, it tastes normal. Somewhere behind the crowd of journalists, Biggsy shoots him a huge thumbs up and mouths, _Everclear_ at him and Kent just raises a single eyebrow and huffs out a laugh, because what the hell, may wonders never cease. 

“Something wrong, Parson?” Pierre McGuire says, stepping in close, like he always does, but in this moment, Kent can’t even bring himself to be care. 

“Nope, nothing’s wrong,” Kent says, taking another sip of Biggsy’s concoction, and grinning real wide straight at the camera. “I just won the Stanley Cup, remember?”

~

Kent blinks up at the the Samwell Men’s Hockey Haus through the dark lens of his Ray Bans, determined to plow straight through the hangover headache that’s making itself well at home as a dull sort of ache in the back of his head. He spent the better part of last night dodging reporters and sneaking shots where no one could see him, and as much as part of him wishes he could still be in bed in his hotel room right now, there’s been this force pulling at him since he first touched down in Boston the other day. Like there’s this compass somewhere inside of him that can’t help but anchor itself directly into the path of Jack Zimmermann. This is the closest that he’s been to Zimms in — god, in literal fucking years, and just the thought of that, that the distance could be so slim, is blowing his fucking mind right now.

The house is a real ramshackle piece of work, with peeling paint and porch steps that sink a little when Kent puts weight onto them and pushes down. If it didn’t so clearly match the address that Alicia Zimmermann had rattled off to him over the phone a scant few hours ago, Kent never would’ve believed that this is where Jack was voluntarily choosing to stay for the better part of his summer break. 

Kent lifts up one hand to rap on the door, once, twice, and then waits. A minute later, it’s wrenched open by some dude with shaggy hair and a face mostly obscured by a pair of aviators. 

“Woah,” the dude says, leaning against the door jamb, and sticking out a hand for Kent to shake. “What the hell. Congrats, man, that was a hell of a series.” 

There’s a faint but distinct smell of weed in the air that Kent forces himself not to wrinkle his nose at but jesus, he’s not a teenager in the Q anymore, and he’s long since lost any kind of desire to indulge in anything harder than vodka. Or Everclear, apparently. Fucking Biggsy. 

Kent takes this guy’s hand and shakes it, but he can’t help himself, Kent’s not really paying attention to him so much as he’s trying to peer over this dude’s shoulder, trying to catch sight of any sign that Jack is here. “Thanks, man. Kent Parson,” Kent says, a little uselessly, because clearly it’s not like this dude doesn’t know who he is. 

“I’m Shitty, by the way,” says the dude, and it takes a second for the connection to land, to get that this guy is trying to tell Kent his name, and not a just good adjective to describe the weird growth disguised as a mustache that’s currently forming on his face. “You here to see Jack?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Kent says, suddenly nervous, because there’s no way it could possibly be this easy. Three years of silence and then here he is. ‘You here to see Jack?’ Shitty asks, like it’s nothing, like it’s not _everything_. “He around?” 

“Oh, yeah, hold on, just let me — ”

But what, exactly, Kent was supposed to let Shitty do, he never gets the chance to find out. There’s a shout from behind Shitty and then a flooding of people, and then all of a sudden, the entryway is crammed tight with a bunch of other guys who all want to shake Kent’s hand and clap him on the back, and none of them, _none of them_ , are Jack. 

And, look — Kent’s getting used to this, now, to the very real fact that he’s famous, that he’s not going to be able to go places without getting recognized. It was one thing when he was famous in the way that everyone who’s really fucking good at hockey is famous within the hockey community; he got used to the NHL faithful who would recognize him when he was bumming around New York, and rattle off some stats while asking him how it felt to have his name on the Calder. He’s starting to realize that it’s going to be a whole other fucking ballpark now that he’s got a Stanley Cup under his belt at aged twenty. 

He showed up to a house populated entirely by D1 hockey players, what else did he fucking expect? Of course this was going to happen; of course he was going to have to shake hands, to make nice. Only, he didn’t get enough sleep last night and he’s just crossed over into that raw side of hungover where everything feels just a little too close to the surface, and Jack Zimmermann is — Jack Zimmermann is standing at the top of the steps, staring down at Kent with an inscrutable look on his face. 

Kent pushes his sunglasses up to the top of his head, feeling stupid, suddenly, stupid and foolish and maybe a little bit too impulsive. “Hey, Zimms.”

“What are you doing here, Parse?” Jack says, when he gets to the bottom of the stairs, but even then, he keeps one hand on the railing, like he wants to flee at any moment. 

Jack looks — well, the last time Kent saw Jack, he was sheet-white, his eyes were still a little blood-shot, and he was wearing a thin, paper blue hospital gown, so anything would have to be better than that, probably. He looks okay, though. Hair a little shorter, eyes a little bit clearer, but he’s got his back ramrod straight, and he’s tapping a finger idly against the stairwell railing, like he always does when he’s uncomfortable but not enough to do anything about it. 

The other guys, who were all chattering amongst themselves, all go a little too quiet and a little too tense for it to be anything other than purposeful. Kent swallows hard and wishes very, very much that their audience of frat bros would just disappear already. Jesus, this feels weird. 

“Ah, you know,” Kent says, gesturing widely with his hands, and forcing the sort of grin that he usually reserves for media interviews. “I was in the neighborhood, thought that I’d swing by and do some celebrating, captain to captain.” 

Look at us, he wants to say, _would_ say if Jack could just get rid of these random assholes. Look, we made it. Look, here we are. Three years back, Jack would have got it. Three years back, Jack would have smiled. 

Or, well. At least that’s what Kent tells himself, anyways. 

Jack nods, a little too sharply. Kent still can’t read a single fucking thing from Jack’s face right now, and it’s spooking the hell out of him. He doesn’t know if it’s his exhaustion, or the thought that maybe he just doesn’t know how to read Jack anymore. God knows he never thought he’d see the day. 

Kent resists the urge to lift a hand up to rub at his chest, like trying to feel out a phantom pain. 

Jack crosses his arms over his chest, and there’s something surly and withdrawn about him, now, and it’s pushing all of Kent’s buttons, taking him right back to every goddamn argument they ever had. Kent thinks, suddenly, of every unanswered text message he’s sent in the past three years and winces. 

“Your team won’t be missing you?” 

“Plane won’t leave without me,” Kent says, a little too flippantly, he realizes, by the way Jack’s expression goes from blank to dark, a frown set deep into the lines around his mouth. He doesn’t say anything. 

Isn’t going to say anything, Kent is realizing, a pit opening up in his gut. Isn’t going to invite Kent upstairs, or head out with him onto the porch, or— Kent could say it, could ask ‘Can we talk?’ but that would blow the whole game wide open, in front of all these guys who’re looking at Kent like he’s everything and then at Jack like he’s nothing. 

And — Kent’s hazy with confusion, with the adrenaline of seeing Jack again _finally_ spiking outwards, but if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s this: Kent’s spent the past three years asking Jack ‘Can we talk?’ He was hoping, maybe, by showing up here, that he wouldn’t have to say it ever again. 

“Hey, who wants a beer?” Shitty says, breaking into the tense silence that was slowly starting to wrap themselves around them, and stepping up to Jack to clap him on the shoulder. Jack looks at Shitty as if he’s just been snapped out of a daze, and nods. 

They shuffle into the kitchen, and a couple of the older guys dig out some cans of Natty Ice from a thirty rack that was sitting on the counter. It’s pretty typical college fare, Kent knows, from the few times he’s dropped by parties at the University of Las Vegas. Jeff has this whole funny rant on Natty Ice that Kent almost wants to open up his mouth and share, but then Jack drops down into the chair next to him at the table, and Kent loses the thread of it completely. 

Jack cracks open a can of beer but doesn’t move to drink any of it, and he just sits there, not saying anything. Carefully, ever so cautiously, Kent shifts his leg a couple of inches to the left, so that their thighs are barely touching under the table. They used to do this a lot, during team meals at the local pizza parlor or family dinners at Kent’s billet; one of them would reach out, make the first move, and then the other would rapidly follow suit. And maybe some of it was just to fuck with each other, to push a button, see if they could make a blush crawl up the back of a neck, but most days, it was just kind of nice, that reassuring press of fabric against fabric, like their own private, “hey, there you are.” 

Jack jerks his leg away, and doesn’t quite shift to move his chair away from Kent, but it’s a very near thing. 

Kent inhales sharply, swallows some beer to cover it up. “Congrats on your season, by the way. Saw you guys nearly made the Frozen Four this year,” Kent says, raising his can in a parody of a salute. 

Some guy who definitely never bothered to introduce himself scoffs. “I mean, it was pretty cool, but it’s not exactly the Stanley Cup, is it?”

Another chimes in. “We could’ve gone all the way, maybe, but the coaches kept putting inexperienced players on the starting line, that shit really fucked us up.” 

Next to him, Jack is toying with the tab on his can, back and forth, back and forth, letting out a sigh that probably only Kent hears. Oh. So _that’s_ how this is. No wonder it seemed so goddamn weird in here. 

“I don’t know,” Kent starts, a little slowly. “I don’t think the Aces could’ve won this year without our rookies. Sometimes you have to take those risks, you know?” 

“Well, I guess you’d know, huh,” the first guy says, with just a touch of patronization that puts Kent’s teeth on edge. 

“How’d you know where to find me?” Jack says, out of the blue, eyes gone real wide and chin jutting out like it does when he wants to pick a fight. 

“Your mom told me,” Kent says, and barely resists the urge to follow it up with a childish, _what, is that a problem?_ He wants to, though. Boy, does he want to. 

Jack hums, but doesn’t answer. On the other side of the table, Shitty looks between the two of them and frowns. 

And right there and then, somewhere between Jack’s pointed slump and the concerned, too-familiar looks that this Shitty guy is shooting Jack, Kent’s patience snaps right in half. 

“Well,” Kent drawls, leaning back in his chair. “You’ll have a shiny new captain next year, so I guess you’ll have to wait and find out how he does, huh? I’m sure he’d never let his team down.” 

It wouldn’t sound like the dig that it is to anyone other than Jack, Kent knows, and he’s proven right by the approving nod that Shitty, fucking oblivious stoner that he so clearly is, sends in Kent’s direction. 

Jack freezes next to him, and mutters out a quick, “I guess so.” 

“You’re right, though, Zimms,” Kent says, completely switching gears. “I shouldn’t keep my team waiting. I’ve got a plane to catch. Thanks for the beer, gentlemen.” 

There’s a chorus of mumbled ‘no problem’s around the table, and Kent pushes his chair back, enjoying a little too much how it scrapes against the hardwood floors. Kent doesn’t look behind him as he pushes open the screen door out onto the porch, but he knows that Jack is following him. 

The front door shuts behind them both with a clatter, and Kent thinks that he knows how this is going to go, that there’s going to be real words now that they’re alone— and then Jack hooks a hand around Kent’s wrist, and holds on tight. 

Kent stops in his tracks, and Jack does too, but Jack’s fingers stay wrapped around Kent’s wrist. Kent closes his eyes, tries his hardest to look like this isn’t doing anything for him, but he’s holding his breath like the slightest movement will chase Jack away and leave him adrift. 

“Kent—” Jack says, and then stops. Kent leans in and hates himself for every second of it, hates how fucking easy it is for him to take this moment and run with it, to lean right into Jack when Jack’s given him no good fucking reason to do so. They’re close enough to kiss, probably, but there’s a thin screen door standing between them and a handful of strangers, and cars passing by in the street, so instead, all Kent can do is stare. 

Every inch of Kent feels taut, like a livewire, and he doesn’t want to think about how this is the closest he’s been to someone like this in almost a year now, the closest he’s been to anything remotely resembling real intent — not since that bar, in New York, practically a whole lifetime ago. Only this time, it’s all ramped up about ten notches or so because how could it not be, it’s fucking _Jack_. 

“Do you have anything to say to me, Zimms?” Kent asks, finally. Hoping, hoping so hard, hating himself for hoping even after whatever the fuck _that_ had been inside there. 

Jack lets go of Kent like he’s been burned, and takes a step back. “I— no, uh. You should get going, Parse. You might miss your flight.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Kent says. His head is pounding, and if Jack hadn’t let him go, he would be able to feel the tremor in Kent’s hands. Kent almost wishes Jack _could_ feel that tremor, that tiniest slip in control, but he’s not sure if he’s ready to offer up that much more of his pride to the altar of Jack Zimmermann. Not today, anyways. “You know, next time? If you’re going to go and hang up before you ever bother to say anything? Maybe just don’t call, alright.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack says, stiff as anything, and now Kent _has_ to laugh. 

“Yeah, I’m sure you don’t,” Kent says, and it feels like — like something, like victory, maybe, but if this is any kind of victory, it’s a hollow one. Kent takes the porch steps in one quick leap, doesn’t look back as he slides into his car and starts it up, turning tail towards Logan and leaving Jack in his rearview mirror.

~

In Kent’s phone, under a contact he’s never deleted, is a column of text messages that never got an answer. Years of things he had to say to Jack, things he wanted Jack to say back, words upon words upon words because he’d tried running on actions alone with Jack, and that hadn’t gotten them much of anything, ultimately.

And Jack had been there, Jack had been fucking _right there_ in front of him, pinning Kent to the fucking spot with those blue eyes, and Kent couldn’t get a single one of those words out. Not the ones that mattered. 

Jack hadn’t even given him that chance. 

“Fuck,” Kent hisses, pounding a fist against the steering wheel, not even a little bit in time to whatever shitty country music is pouring out of the radio. “What the fuck.”

It’s like losing to the Schooners. It’s like getting knocked out of the Conference final last year by the fucking Hawks. It’s like every loss Kent has ever had playing this fucking game, rolled up into one.

It’s not like those losses, though. It’s worse. This is the biggest loss Kent has ever had, and he just keeps losing it, over, and over, and—

He could turn around. He could peel back to Samwell, kick down the door of that dank-ass shithole, drag Jack out and fucking _make_ him talk to him, or failing that, make him _look_ at him, make him look long and hard at Kent and see him properly for the first time in years, see what Kent’s become in the shattering wake of losing Jack. 

Or he could press on to Boston. The city might not be happy with their team’s loss, but he suspects they’ll be plenty happy to celebrate with Kent anyway. And just keep on celebrating, blurring and blotting out everything other than the next bar, the next drink, the next crowd to get lost in, since it’s not like there’s another game to play for a good long while now. It’s not like there’s anything Kent has to keep himself together for, anyways. 

For now, Kent just drives. It’s easy, it’s automatic, and if he goes fast enough it almost gives him the weightless, bodiless feeling he gets during his best moments on the ice. So quick, so light, that no one can even see him. Let alone touch him. 

A couple of miles outside of Logan, while stuck at a red light, Kent leans over and checks his phone, mostly out of habit. He’s got at least thirty new texts because of course he does, so he scans them over, zeroing in on the ones that are important. 

In one, Jeff’s sent him a photo of Timmers hugging the Cup, looking a couple of different shades of bleary and hungover. 

In another, Carla sends him a text that just says, [if you’re gone another 48 hours, I’m keeping your cat.]

In a third, from Banks: [dont believe Deeks lies, I got dibs for next to you on the plane. Won em fair and square off him at flip cup last night, you+I are talking team celebration/vacay plans] 

From his mom: [so proud of you, Captain! xoxoxxo]

From his sister: [u better bring the cup back home for your day w it, I have Plans]

Kent shakes his head, and guns the car when the light turns green. 

He can breathe. He can drive. He can head over to Logan, haul himself up into that plane, let it carry him back to Vegas. He can be there with his team. _His_ team. 

He could destroy himself over Jack Zimmermann. Someday, he probably will. That writing’s been on the wall for a long time, and Kent isn’t even sure he wants to change it, let alone figure out how he ever could. 

So fucking what. 

There’s one thing in his life that Kent knows to be true: he can play good fucking hockey and he can play it through anything. He’s got an aching head and a swollen ankle, and Jack Zimmermann’s just another thing to add to the top of the pile. Hell, Jack Zimmermann makes up half of the fucking pile in the first place. 

And yet here he is. Speeding his way to a whole summer’s worth of Stanley Cup celebrations. 

Right now, Kent’s got other things to do. Right now, he’s got better places to be.


End file.
